Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Japan’s Defence Minister Tomomi Inada on Friday (July 28) announced her resignation from the post accepting her involvement in the scandal of the handling of military documents.

Inada was appointed the defence minister in August 2016, being a close confidant of the PM Shinzo Abe and also sharing his ideologies, she was considered as the future leader of the nation. But in the past one year, she has been connected with a lot of controversies. She was accused of covering up the politically sensitive activity logs of the Ground Self-Defense Force unit that was deployed for peacekeeping duty in conflict-riven South Sudan.

After her resignation, Inada addressed a press conference saying that she voluntarily wanted to resign rather than facing an outright dismissal. She accepted her involvement saying that “there were numerous instances of what appeared to be information leakage from within our organization. As someone who is in a position to oversee the Defense Ministry and the SDF, I feel a very deep sense of responsibility for all this. I have thus decided to step down as defense minister.”

Inada involved in the scandal also affected the popularity of the PM badly. Abe became prime minister of Japan for a second time in December 2012 and vowed to rejuvenate Japan’s economy but his party members repeatedly being involved in controversies has affected his vote bank negatively. Following the resignation of Inada, PM staged an apology saying that “I apologise from the bottom of my heart to the people for this situation in which a minister resigns.” He also added that it was his responsibility to appoint the right people to his cabinet and that he will take peoples criticism seriously now.